1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a method and apparatus for printing a document in designated colors with reference to remaining color toner or ink information. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for printing a document in designated colors through a driver or a printing device referring to the remaining color toner or ink information that a printing device supports.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, to print a document stored in a data processing device through a printing device, a data processing device requires a driver for driving the printing device. A document in the printing process refers to an object including text, image and other types of objects to be printed by the printing device. When a print command is given for printing an object document that is prepared through an application program, the application program transmits to the driver the print command and the object document to be printed. The driver converts the print command and the object document to be printed to a data format recognizable to the printing device. The converted data is transferred to the printing device through an interface, and printed on a printing paper.
FIG. 1 illustrates a part of a printing process according to a prior art printing method. Referring to FIG. 1, a setup menu 10 is shown. In the case when a document to be printed contains images and text in color, a user has two options according to the prior art printing method. One is to print the entire document in color, and the other is to print the document in black and white. On the other hand, in case that a document to be printed contains color images and black and white text, a color cartridge is used to print the color image(s) and a black cartridge is used to print the black and white text. If the user chooses the black and white printing, the entire document is printed in black and white.
Therefore, even though a document contains different kinds of objects, it is impossible to change the (pre-designated) colors of those objects for printing. That is, the user has only two options left, either printing the document the way it was prepared through the application program (whatever colors there were), or printing the entire document in black and white.
If the user wants to change colors of the objects, he or she disadvantageously has to go back to the application program to produce the document in new colors.
Another problem is that in practice printers are not likely to use an equal amount of each color for every printing process. Some colors in the printing device may be more abundant than others. If certain colors in the printing device are exhausted, an object image or text to be printed cannot be expressed in many diverse colors. In such a case, even though only a part of the colors are used up, the entire cartridge should be replaced.